When Pat Dunnavant started the Potomac Village School 31 years ago, Potomac was a country town where just about everybody knew everybody else.
“The village was just a little crossroads. There was a baseball field over where the Amoco is,” said Dunnavant, 79, who will retire next month after three decades at the helm of the nursery school.
“It was very kind of country-like atmosphere, even though Potomac was beginning to grow. For instance, Brickyard Road wasn’t even paved.”
That close-knit atmosphere remained throughout the school’s tenure, even as Potomac developed rapidly and the school changed locations four times, finally landing at Trinity Presbyterian Church on Wilson Lane in Bethesda, where it has been since 1997.
With Dunnavant’s departure the school will close, ending the educational era of the woman known to parents and students as “Miz Pat.”
Dunnavant said that in all the years she ran the school she never advertised for help, relying on friends and friends of friends to find qualified teachers.
Within families, the school became an institution. Some of the school’s earliest students have sent their own children there, and most of the staff enrolled their children as well.
Judy Darvish sent her oldest son John, now 33, to the school in its first year. Now five of her grandchildren have gone. Two others were planning to start in September.
“It’s their loss,” Darvish said of the 18-month-old youngsters who won’t have the chance to attend Miz Pat’s school. “It was just such a loving, nurturing environment for them.”
“She was just a cheerleader for all the kids. There was nothing like Miz Pat. They would do anything for Miz Pat. I would take them out for breakfast after church on Sunday and she would walk in to Tally Ho and they would just go all over her: ‘Oh Miz Pat,’” Darvish said.
THE POTOMAC VILLAGE School grew out of Camp Furman, the Oaklyn Drive summer camp run by Potomac Developer Ron Furman in the 1970s.
Dunnavant, who had retired from a career at Riggs Bank when her daughter Patti was born, worked at the camp and then at another nursery school before friends encouraged her to consider starting a school of her own.
The school filled a needed niche, with many young children and no nursery schools in the Potomac area.
“We just grew by leaps and bounds,” Dunnavant said. The school spent five years at Potomac Presbyterian Church before outgrowing the space and moving to St. George’s Orthodox Church on Seven Locks Road for seven years, then to St. Francis Episcopal Church in Potomac Village, then to St. James Church and then to Trinity.
Many of the churches started their own schools in the wake of the Potomac Village School’s departure.
The school was marked by a nurturing and egalitarian philosophy. It had no application process — every child was accepted.
“My philosophy is this: you know there’s just something unique and very good about every child,” Dunnavant said. “I always said to everybody working for me, you look for the good things about that child and you go from there. I never approved of speaking harshly to kids or anything like that.”
DUNNAVANT SAID she is retiring simply because the time is right, and plans to keep busy with activities — particularly travel. For her first trip, she plans to visit Norway, her ancestral home, in August.
Dunnavant’s husband died in 1995, but she remains both healthy and energetic.
“The kids kept her young,” Patti Dunnavant said of her mother.
Dunnavant agreed. She said that she has perhaps learned more from her students than they from her.
“There’s so much to life to learn from those kids. They’re so honest about everything. When they’re little like that they don’t lie, even if they did something wrong. There’s just so much wholesome honesty,” Dunnavant said. “There’s just such a joy of living. Whatever they do, it’s such a pleasure for them. They have such fun in doing things, little things.”
Kyra Kraft, 29, attended Potomac Village School at age 3. This summer Kraft will take over the Potomac Village School space and start up a new nursery school there under a different name.
Kraft called Dunnavant the “warmest nicest most loving person ever” and cited her not only as a friend but as the mentor responsible for her own passion for education.
“She taught me a lot of the things that I know, the best way possible, which is just hands on learning,” Kraft said. “She will be on the other end of the phone when I have any questions.”